Shyness (defined as a tendency to avoid and fail to participate in social situations and to feel anxious during most interpersonal encounters) has important implications for adequate social adjustment. The primary objectives of the proposed research are: (1) to determine the prevalence of shyness (and its major cognitive components, excessive self-consciousness and fears of negative evaluation) in samples of psychiatric patients and untreated adults; (2) to examine the relationship between shyness and both depression and chronic anxiety; (3) to create a typology of different kinds of shyness based on the relative importance of physiological, cognitive, and behavioral components; and (4) to examine, on a detailed level, the verbal and nonverbal differences between persons who are shy and those who are not. The research will be done in two stages. The first step will be a survey of normal and clinical samples, and the second step, a series of behavioral assessments of selected survey respondents. The assessments will be performed in settings of both practical and theoretical importance: (1) a clinical interview exploring characteristic styles of experiencing and expressing hostility; (2) a role-play, behavioral test; and (3) a test of the ability to identify the nonverbal cues of others. Key features of the proposal are, first, the use of psychiatric patients, since many earlier studies of social anxiety have sampled from only mildly impaired, student populations, and second, the use of direct observational methods, particularly in a psychiatric facility where diagnosis and description often rely heavily on global impressions and retrospective histories.